#laing

Vote solely on the cover versions, NOT the original songs.

Original artists included for clarification purposes only.

* originally by Trude Herr under the title Morgens Bin Ich Immer Müde

“In order to understand the nature of the transition from sanity to insanity when the point of departure is the particular form of a schizoid existential position described in the foregoing pages, it is necessary to consider the psychotic possibilities that arise out of this particular existential context. In this position, we stated that the self, in order to develop and sustain its identity and autonomy, and in order to be safe from the persistent threat and danger from the world, has cut itself off from direct relatedness with others, and has endeavoured to become its own object: to become, in fact, related directly only to itself. Its cardinal functions become phantasy and observation.

Now, in so far as this is successful, one necessary consequence is that the self has difficulty in sustaining any sentiment du réel for the very reason that it is not "in touch' with reality, it never actually 'meets' reality. As Minkowski (I933) puts it, there is loss of ‘vital contact' with the world. Instead, relationship with others and the world is, as we saw, delegated to a false-self system whose perceptions, feelings, thoughts, actions, possess a relatively low ‘coefficient' of realness.

The individual in this position may appear relatively normal, but he is maintaining his outward semblance of normality by progressively more and more abnormal and desperate means. The self engages in phantasy in the private ‘world' of 'mental' things, i.e. of its own objects, and observes the false self, which alone is engaged in living in the 'shared world'. Since direct communication with others in this real shared world has been turned over to the false-self system, it is only through this medium that the self can communicate with the outside shared world. Hence what was designed in the first instance as a guard or barrier to prevent disruptive impingement on the self, can become the walls of a prison from which the self cannot escape.

Thus the defences against the world fail even in their primary functions: to prevent persecutory impingements (implosion) and to keep the self alive, by avoiding being grasped and manipulated as a thing by another. Anxiety creeps back more intensely than ever. The unrealness of perception and the falsity of the purposes of the false-self system extend to feelings of deadness of the shared world as a whole, to the body, in fact, to all that is, and infiltrate even to the true self. Everything becomes suffused with nothingness. The inner self itself becomes entirely unreal or 'phantasticized', split, and dead, and no longer able to sustain what precarious sense of its own identity it started with. This is aggravated by the use of the very possibilities that are most ominous as defences, e.g. the avoidance of being identified to preserve identity (since as we have indicated above, identity is reached and sustained two-dimensionally, it requires recognition of oneself by others as well as the simple recognition one accords to oneself); or the deliberate cultivation of a state of death-in-life as a defence against the pain of life.

Efforts both at further withdrawal of the self and towards restitution of the self come to combine in the same direction of psychosis. In one way, the schizoid individual may be desperately trying to be himself, to regain and preserve his being; yet it is very difficult to disentangle the desire to be from the desire for non-being, since so much that the schizoid person does is in its nature inextricably ambiguous. Can one say unequivocally of Peter that he was seeking to destroy himself or to preserve himself? The answer cannot be provided if we think of the two terms of either/or as mutually exclusive. Peter's defences against life were, in large measure, the creation of a form of death within life, which seemed to afford within itself a measure of freedom from anxiety, at least for a time. In order to survive he had, like the possum, to feign a measure of death. Peter could either 'be himself' when he was anonymous or incognito, i.e. when he was not known to others, or he could let himself be known to others if he was not being himself. This equivocation could not be sustained indefinitely, since the sense of identity requires the existence of another by whom one is known; and a conjunction of this other person's recognition of one's self with self-recognition. It is not possible to go on living indefinitely in a sane way if one tries to be a man disconnected from all others and uncoupled even from a large part of one's own being.

Such a mode of being-with-others would presuppose the capacity to maintain one's reality by means of a basically autistic identity. It would presuppose that it is finally possible to be human without a dialectical relationship to others. It seems that the whole aim of this manœuvring is the preservation of an inner' identity from phantasied destruction from outer sources, by eliminating any direct access from without to this 'inner self. But without the "self" ever being qualified by the other, committed to the "objective element, and without being lived in a dialectical relationship with others, the 'self' is not able to preserve what precarious identity or aliveness it may already possess.

The changes that the 'inner' self undergoes have already in part been described. They may be listed here as follows:

I. It becomes 'phantasticized' or 'volatilized' and hence loses any firmly anchored identity.

2. It becomes unreal.

3. It becomes impoverished, empty, dead, and split.

I was also lucky enough to add a pair of Tom's trainers that he wore during the movie from the production company who made the High Rise movie.

Rosemany Laing (1959-2024) Australian

1 The Flowering of the Strange Orchid (2017)  archival pigment print 103 x 203cm

2 brumby mound #5 (2003) C type photo 109.9 x 225cm

3 Aristide (2010)  C type photo  110 x 223cm

4 weather#9 (2006)  C Type photograph  129 x 205 cm

5 welcome to Australia (2004)  C Type photograph 110 x 224cm

6 flight research #5 (1999)   C Type photograph 107 x 240cm

A     tolarnogalleries.com

Rosemary Laing is a photo-based artist. Her projects are most often created in relation to cultural and/or historically resonant locations throughout Australia. With interventions undertaken in situ or through the use of choreographed performance work, she engages with the politics of place and contemporary culture.

B     Victoria Lynn

Laing has spent time researching the history of land and the notion of landscapes at length, and through multiple angles. This has included film, literature, and painting, and the belief systems of Indigenous people. “Laing asks us to think through our own relationship to these bodies of knowledge and our sense of belonging and displacement in these landscapes.

C     Rachel Kent

Eschewing digital means, Laing worked in situ to construct her dramatic tableaux, with performers from athletes to stuntwomen, and other collaborators.

D    artgallery.nsw.gov.au

In the 'flight research' series Laing photographed a woman wearing a bridal dress suspended in the air. In some works she hovers over an extensive mountainous landscape seeming to defy the laws of gravity. In others such as this image there is a poignant sense of impending disaster as the bride tips forward hands outstretched, seeming to anticipate her eventual contact with the earth. The bright cerulean blue of the sky and the white of the bride’s dress make a dramatic contrast and seem symbolic, the blue suggesting infinite space and traditionally the heavens and the white dress carrying the weight of virginity, innocence and purity.

So this is from the scene in High Rise where Tom is, well....as he says 😂